GollyJer's questions

This is a browser agnostic question but we're testing with IE9.

One of the web apps our users visit is being randomly cached and changes aren't showing up when they should. No other site has this issue and we've worked with the vendor who claims it isn't happening to anyone else. If we use the developer toolbar and select "force refresh from server" everything updates correctly.

Instead of truly solving the issue our thought is to work around it by disabling cache for this specific site. However, we don't know how.

For example I want to add Google Search as the default search service to IE. The seven registry entries are below. Do I really have to enter each one individually under User Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry? Is there an easier way to add registry entries into group policy?

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes]
"DefaultScope"="{3B236023-DA3B-4545-8218-B0D402D2AA87}"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\{3B236023-DA3B-4545-8218-B0D402D2AA87}]
"DisplayName"="Google"
"URL"="http://www.google.com/search?q={searchTerms}&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:{language}:{referrer:source}&ie={inputEncoding?}&oe={outputEncoding?}"
"ShowSearchSuggestions"=dword:00000001
"SuggestionsURL"="http://clients5.google.com/complete/search?q={searchTerms}&client=ie8&mw={ie:maxWidth}&sh={ie:sectionHeight}&rh={ie:rowHeight}&inputencoding={inputEncoding}&outputencoding={outputEncoding}"
"OSDFileURL"="http://www.ieaddons.com/en/DownloadHandler.ashx?ResourceId=813"
"FaviconURL"="http://www.google.com/favicon.ico"

Windows 7 Search Indexing service is causing some problems on our network. We get a ton of use out of it, but can no longer run it during the day while users are actively working. Because search will actually work even when the indexing service is off (it will simply search an outdated index), I figure we can turn the service on for a couple hours in the middle of the night to update the user's indexes and then turn it off again.

The problem I face is finding the best way to do this through group policy.

• Windows Server 2008
• Windows 7 Client PCs

Thanks.

Our users have a toolbar on their Windows taskbar called "I Need Help". It holds links to our support system with specific fields prefilled. We've changed some of the structure our our support system and need to replace the links inside the folder. Some of the links have different names and some are being completely removed. Ideally we just want to clear the folder and replace it with a new set of files.

What's the best way to do this through Group Policy Preferences in Windows Server 2008?

The manual way is to right click the taskbar, choose "Add Toolbar...", new toolbar, and select a folder.

We've got the folder pushed down via Group Policy, but other than walking around to each machine I'm at a loss on how to add the toolbar to the taskbar.

Thanks.

Default drag & drop behavior

• Same drive, move.
• Different drive, copy.

Is this configurable? If so, how?

FYI, I know you can right click, drag and drop, to get a Move/Copy context menu.

Scenario:

• Public computer with scanner attached.
• Client computers with 'My Documents\Scanned Documents' shared but password protected.
• Public computer has a shortcut to each users 'Scanned Documents' folder.
• At Public computer, user scans a document and it creates a file on the desktop.
• User moves the scanned file from the desktop to their private shared folder.

Question:
How do I configure the shared folder so it asks for the password every time it's accessed?
Bonus points: How do I set permissions on the shared folder to reset after X minutes of inactivity. In other words, instead of asking for a password every time, ask for a password if X minutes have passed since last being accessed.

We use Windows Server 2008 and Vista clients. Thanks.

We run on a Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 domain. Is there a way to manipulate toolbars via Group Policy?

This is a fork from this question.

Right now, using Outlook 2007, the users have to open the item before 'Reply' acts as an email reply. If they simply click the email and read it in the reading pain, the reply button in the Outlook toolbar shows 'Post Reply'. This simply posts a message back to the public folder.

When accessing a folder from the server...
Exchange Management Console > Public Folder Management Console > desired folder properties
...there is no permissions tab to be found.

I know this can be done via Outlook, but the real problem is somehow a public folder was created that Admin doesn't have rights to access.

Not sure if this is really a Server Fault question, but I'll see how it goes...

Since implementing Windows Automatic Updates my users are complaining about the number of updates. The main reason is that they're now being caught up on a years worth of updates which will slow down next week, but... I'd like to give them some real data on update comparisons from other OS's. OS X being the main " is so much better" offender and I can only scrounge up one good article showing the number of bug fixes released by Apple.

Anyone have a good resource for this type of information?

I'm finding that most users ignore the "There are updates ready to be installed, click here to install" message that WSUS pushes out. Until now we haven't forced the install but I'm thinking about changing the group policy to enforce updates nightly. This will sometimes require a reboot which I want to enforce through GP as well.

I know there will be push-back from the users but am wondering if this is defendable best practice. It seems like the right thing to do to ensure PCs are up to date and secure.

The Network

• Windows Server 2008
• Dell Gigabit Managed Switch
• PCs running Vista SP2 with gigabit network cards

The Story
The 2008 Windows server is new as of a couple months ago and knowing that the PCs should now negotiate using SMB2 which removes the transfer bottleneck at the OS level I expected close to gigabit transfer speeds for large file copies between machines.

Vista measures file transfers in Megabytes/second. A gigabit network can theoretically transfer at 125MB/s. Let's say there's 15% overhead. So a realistic acceptable transfer rate is around 105MB/s.

I decided to dig into this today as I was copying large iso's from my local pc to the server and getting 9-12 MB/s. Unacceptable given the technology employed.

Before digging into jumbo frames, hard setting the NIC speeds, etc. I decided to do the simple thing and update NIC drivers on the PC. They went from the OS provided 2006 drivers to the manufacturer provided June 2009 drivers. Guess what. An amazing thing happened. The next copy of a test iso transferred at 103MB/s. Freakin' sweet. We subsequently went around to the other 25 machines in the office and upgraded all of their drivers. Then it gets interesting.

The copy test started to be inconsistent. We'd get 100MB/s on one machine and 65 on another. Then a machine that was getting 100 would get 12. These were simple tests but there were NOT other large file transfers happening that would cause a bottleneck at the hard drive level.

So then we set one of the PCs to hard negotiate at gigabit full duplex. It started copying at a consistent 80-90MB/s. This leads me to believe that there's something off in the connection negotiation either between the server and the PC, the server and the switch, or some other combination of the three. There is a firmware and driver update for the server NIC which we'll install tonight, but they currently aren't nearly as old as the client drivers were.

The Question
OK, that's the long story for a really simple question. How do we track negotiated speeds for the clients on the network? Is there a software tool that can go out and aggregate the data for us? Can it only be done with file transfer test?

If we can see what they're connecting at then maybe we can track down which brand of NIC is bad, if the switch is the problem, if the server is the problem, etc...

Thanks.